66% Of Germans Would Consider A Tesla Model 3, According To Poll
Originally published on EV Obsession.
Despite the strong bias that most German citizens have for German-made cars, it appears that the Tesla Model 3 unveiling has made quite an impact on the public there. A new poll from the German car magazine Autobild found that 66% of those queried said that they would consider buying a Model 3.
While that may not sound like a substantial percentage, for a country as insular (in many ways) as Germany, that’s really quite impressive. Especially when considering that many of the top sellers on the international auto market currently are made by German brands. One can guess that the execs behind these brands/companies — BMW, Mercedes, Audi, etc — are really starting to feel the heat. Nobody in Germany wants to see their cash cow slaughtered and shipped off to America, after all.
Teslarati provides some more on that:
The recent unveiling of the Tesla Model 3 has gotten Daimler shareholders feeling defensive. At the company’s annual meeting in Berlin on Wednesday, several had pointed questions for management. Ingo Speich, portfolio manager for Union Investment, said the capital markets are concerned the “fat years” for premium German car makers are over. The automobile industry is looking at “a radical upheaval, driven by attacks from Silicon Valley,” he said via the Financial Times.
Several shareholders wanted to know what Daimler is doing to counter the pressure to build electric cars spearheaded by Tesla. “We don’t really have a product for this competition from Tesla. In the long term we have some great vehicles . . . but they are virtual at this point,” one shareholder pointed out. Another worried that the company had no answer to the Model 3. “What is the reason for that?” he asked.
The CEO of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, commented that the company is working on it. 10 plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles are expected to be available in 2017, and the company is working on a long-range all-electric car to be released by the end of the decade.
Notably, Daimler shares are down considerably in 2016 (~20%), as are BMW shares (~25%).
Reprinted with permission.
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Well being born in Germany it does not surprise me. A lot of Germans like quality and are willing to pay for it.
But this may be the best way to force other car makers on board, so to speak, because share holders can exert lots of power and what Tesla has been doing was NOT in secret!
Good for Elon Musk !! :))
Now build up the charging system, worldwide and the battery plants!
Bam! One must spend time in Germany working / studying / hanging out with the citizenry to appreciate the significance of this headline.
Now’s not the time to get smug, however. Model3 is not available at any price right now. Model3 won’t really be available and have the order pipeline cleared for perhaps 3 years. And of all automakers on earth, none have been abruptly woken up by a loud Achtung! than Daimler, BMW, and Audi.
Big ones to watch, however, are the seemingly invincible and very confident-in-themselves Toyota and Honda, who together have owned 5 of the top 10 selling models in the US for many many years now. They are very comfortable and seeing little reason to move I’d imagine.
Detroit, well, is Detroit. Thier market won’t be threatened until there’s a serious offering for pickups, midsize or large SUVs.
Tesla’s not so secret plan is working a little. Tesla needs to do two things. Get the quality good enough, and ramp from 50K cars last year to 500K cars per year ASAP. That will get Totota and Honda’s attention, cause you know they plan ahead, so by the time they get there, they will be building GF2, and either buying or building another car plant. Tesla is like a 5 year old with champion DNA.
Looks like we’ll see PHEV pickups coming out of Detroit in 2017. And I take GM’s Bolt as a serious move into EVs. Detroit seems to be ahead of Japan.
Let them hit up until they evaporate…
As much as we all love Tesla, for the EV revolution to happen, it will need the other major car brands to start following suit.
Now it is tempting to see Tesla as the knight in shining armour and as being the only car company doing something worthwhile with regards to vehicle electrification. But, if we wanted to be objective, we’d have to ask ourselves why the other major car brands have not followed in Tesla’s footsteps and started putting big millions into EVs.
Certainly, Tesla has been entrepreneurial and has a vision. However, whilst Tesla does not possess the massive resources which some of the other car companies possess, it is also not saddled with legacy ICE products. So it can devote itself entirely to creating the best EVs it can, to spend its limited resources on creating a charging network, etc. It does not have any other reason for existing.
If pushing EVs in place of ICE vehicles were a no brainer, BMW, Mercedes, VW, GM, TATA, or any one of them would have by now started to leverage their considerable financial muscle to push EVs instead of ICE cars by now. Why aren’t they doing so? Are they simply dumb? I don’t think so. It would by now have occurred to most of them. Even Nissan, who produces their best selling Leaf and who have spent considerable effort on it, is still very much concerned with pushing their ICE vehicles. They have shareholders to thing about. You might want to argue that they do not have a social conscience – and that might be fair enough.
Unlike TESLA, the major car brands still have an ICE vehicle business to run and maintain. My feeling is that they don’t much care whether they sell EVs or ICE vehicles. What they care about most is the bottom line. I’m pretty sure they have done the costings and come to the conclusion that AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME, the bottom line dictates that they will get a bigger bang for their buck investing a billion dollars in the next generation of SUVs rather than creating a charging network. When, customers start abandoning ICE vehicles in favour of electric cards, I’m willing to bet that they will move to EVs in full force. That will be the tipping point and I can’t wait until BMW and Mercedes get into a race to build the hatchback with the longer range. As of right now however, a CEO who would suggest that the brand spends more on EVs rather than on any of their big sellers in the range would most probably get fired. It is an unfortunate reality at this time.
Tesla does not have an ICE business. And good for them. And thank goodness for Tesla for its role in the popularising of electric vehicles. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the other brands though. I don’t believe that they are all stupid. They are binding their time and reading the market in view of the core of their business. It will be the market that will bring about the change. Lets hope that it is sooner rather than later.
In this respect, I think that the legislator has a major role to play. In Europe, legislators have succeeded, simply through the power of incentives, to push for the share of Diesel vs Petrol to be roughly 50%. So incentives can also be employed help the transition from the ICE to the electrification of vehicles.
Other brands are moving into electric cars, both EVs and PHEVs. Nissan has been there longer than Tesla. GM has an actual EV option out this year.
Batteries have been expensive. That limited the market for EVs and large manufacturers probably saw no sense in putting a lot of effort into building cars that would sell only in small numbers. That isn’t how you make money, especially in a small margin business.
Tesla forced the price of batteries from expensive to affordable and they’re going to force them on to cheap. Now that batteries have dropped from $1,000/kWh to less than $150/kWh look for other car manufacturers to get into the EV business on a serious level.
I’ll be very surprised if most large manufacturers don’t introduce a serious EV over the next five years. Tesla’s success gives them no other option.
Indeed. Toyota and Honda, together, have 5 of the top 10 selling models in the US. Job number one is to not do anything that might disrupt that position, and to do R&D to ensure a steady pipeline of future versions of the Corolla / civic / accord / etc. Same at ford / GM for pickups mid sized snd full sized SUVs.
Secondarily, maybe think about futuristic things.
The difference at Daimler, bmw and Audi is that they’ve already directly felt sales decline due this new competitor.
Kodaks that have to keep making wet chemistry photo films because their business so much relies on it…..
The article did not claim 66% were planning to purchase a Tesla.
If 66% said “Super, gimme” then at least 66% have considered Tesla. The 15% who state the Tesla too expensive have considered Tesla. That brings “considered” up to at least 81%.
Say if only about 15 % would be buying a Tesla, that could be about 100.000 units ? per year in Germany alone?
What a potential for Tesla, to build another European factory!
Dubious survey design. If you ask me if I would consider buying any vehicle model, I’d say yes. That’s called being a sensible consumer who considers all options.
On the other hand, if you were to ask me if I have any firm intentions to buy random car XYZ, the answer would probably be no.
This sort of survey has no value whatsoever. At best it can be used to prove that Tesla is now a widely recognised name.